Increasingly in demand as a recitalist, concerto soloist and chamber musician, John Paul Ekins has given performances throughout the UK and Northern Ireland, and overseas in the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Kuwait, Norway, Poland, Romania, Spain and Switzerland, and he has been broadcast on the BBC, on Romanian national television and radio, and on Polish television. In 2009 he graduated from the Royal College of Music with First Class Honours, and in the same year he was awarded the James Anthony Horne Scholarship by the Guildhall School of Music and Drama to study with Charles Owen, where he graduated with Master of Performance (Distinction) in 2011. He was the recipient of a Music Education Award from the Musicians Benevolent Fund, and receives generous support from The Worshipful Company of Innholders, The Concordia Foundation and The Keyboard Charitable Trust.

He has performed at a number of prestigious venues in the UK and abroad, including Bucharest's Athenaeum, Zurich's Tonhalle, Prague's Martinu Hall, Bergen's Troldhaugen, Krakow's Florianka Hall, London's Wigmore Hall, Queen Elisabeth Hall, Purcell Room, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Fairfield Hall and Steinway Hall, Birmingham's Symphony Hall, Oxford's Holywell Music Room, Bath's Pump Room, Bristol's Colston Hall and Belfast's Ulster Hall. He has participated in masterclasses and performed with many renowned musicians and ensembles, such as Salvatore Accardo, the Brodsky String Quartet, Levon Chilingirian and the Chilingirian String Quartet, Peter Donohoe, Bernard Greenhouse, Leslie Howard, Joan Enric Lluna and Martino Tirimo. As a concerto soloist he has performed works by Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Grieg, Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich and Gershwin with orchestras throughout the UK.

International Competition successes include 2nd Prizes in the Amy Brant International Piano Competition, the San Sebastian International Piano Competition, and the Oxford International Piano Competition. In 2010 he was awarded a Jellinek Award in the Guildford Symhpony Orchestra Young Artists Competition, and in 2011 he has won First Prize in the Christopher Duke Piano Competition, the Cattermole Award at the Stratford Festival, and 3rd Prize in The Norah Sande Award. Along with this, in past years he has been named the Kingston, Woking and Croydon Festivals' Young Musician of the Year, and the Richmond Festival's Pianist of the Year, receiving an award from Hanna & Sons Pianos Ltd. in the process. In 2010 he was accepted onto the prestigious Britten-Pears Young Artists Programme 2010, where he worked with sopranos Louise Alder and Hannah Bradbury, taking part in masterclasses with Dame Ann Murray, Ian Partidge and Andrew West.

An avid chamber musician, John Paul has an extensive repertoire of piano and string works, from duos to trios, quartets and quintets. He is a past prize-winner in the Anglo-Czechoslovak Trust Chamber Music Competition, and enjoys a busy schedule working with his many chamber music partners. He recently formed the Chronos Piano Trio, with Michal Cwizewicz and Liubov Ulybysheva, and they have already started to give acclaimed performances in the UK. For more information on this exciting new ensemble, please click here.

Educational and outreach work is enormously important to John Paul too, and as well as private teaching, he has also given workshops and masterclass-recitals to great acclaim in the UK.

John Paul was particularly honoured to be presented to Her Majesty The Queen and His Royal Highness The Prince Philip at a Reception for Young Performers at Buckingham Palace in 2011.